Announcements

Just as soon as we were getting use to sharing our photos on Twitter, out comes a new app that will now allow us to send our videos. The immediacy of communicating on Twitter will now assure your followers that your videos can reach them just as quickly as a tweet or a photo.

All dressed up and no place to go? What's a lady to do for her 123rd Birthday if she really wants to Rock the Harbor? Well, if you're the Statue of Liberty, you just might want to invite a whole bunch of folks over to help you commemorate the special occasion. But how do you get your birthday party invitations out to the masses? Well, in the case of Our Lady, she's chosen to join the craze sweeping the nation... she's tweeting it!

What would you think about having your favorite artist not only autograph memorabilia for you but also personalize a video message with words that you compose? This is the first time major sports figures and artists have signed memorabilia and provided personalized video messages that are delivered directly to fans via the Internet.

Remember those great newspaper movies of the 1940s that portrayed zany journalists racing for the phones to call in their breaking news stories? Well, in a little less than 70 years, today's journalists are now bloggers and videographers who are able to not only submit a story via their mobile phones, but also capable of uploading a video to accompany their news articles.

Are Twitter and Facebook lacking because they don't offer a complement of collaborative tools including threaded replies, RSS feeds, photo and file sharing? Have other microblogging platforms found a chink in their armor? Is 'enterprise microblogging' the next step in the evolutionary process of social networking? Yes, it appears that several new collaboration suites have emerged to fill this void...and in advance of Google Wave's scheduled debut in the Fall.

Once in great while you learn how a simple act of service can bypass the brain and go straight to the heart. Did you ever think that a bagger with a 'thought for the day' or a cab driver with a 'database' could help build customer loyalty! Watch these videos and you will come to understand how a simple idea can have far-reaching ramifications. 

Similar to Mob Wars on Facebook and a series of other copy-cat virtual crime games, 140 Mafia, a mafia-style role playing app has just launched on Twitter. For all those mafioso junkies who are still experiencing withdrawal ever since the Sopranos faded to white, Super Rewards, a leading provider of online games can provide you with just that fix you've been jonseing for!

What if you were able to harness all the conversations on Twitter about any one topic and sell it to advertisers that were looking to target those like-minded potential consumers? Glam Media has created a micro-blogging ad network platform called 'Tinker' that is looking to do just that. Comparable to a matching service like Harmony.com, Tinker will link up Super-Bloggers with Mega-Advertisers. Dissimilar to a dating site, Tinker is all about getting down to business.

Statistics often color our perceptions, and in the sphere of social networking this is most certainly true. We like to make assumptions based on the numbers. However, most often when 'pacing' is omitted from the equation, we lose our perspective as to what the numbers are really telling us. Is Facebook the dominant player in social networking or does its growth numbers tell us something more about where it will be a year from now?

What's a Glubble and why are families queuing up? Glubble turns the Internet from a personal activity into an experience for the entire family. As a new type of social network, Glubble offers an online activity center where families with children under 12 can play, share, discover and learn.

What do Gollum, Kong, The Silver Surfer, the Polar Express, Beowulf and Benjamin Button have in common? They all utilized the innovative technique of 'performance capture" where an actor's movements and expressions are electronically tracked and translated into computer generated imagery (CGI) to make the real-life actor resonate in a hybrid world of animation.

Within minutes of Michael Jackson's passing on June 25, Twitter went abuzz with all ten trending topics referencing Michael Jackson, from "RIP Michael Jackson" to "Pop King." Whatever you may have thought of Michael Jackson's personal life, his contribution to the world of entertainment was unmistakable. He raised the bar beyond the level of Elvis Presley to set a mark that will be hard for any artist to measure up to in the years and generations to come. Watch the Top Ten videos selected to honor the life and times of the King of Pop that were all produced within a few hours of his passing.

With Google and Facebook racing furiously to enter into the real-time search market, Twitter remains dominant on the world stage as to how news is obtained and consumed by the "wisdom of the crowds". From the immediacy of an airplane losing control over the Hudson River to the horrific moment-by-moment cries of revolt on the streets of Tehran, real-time search has dynamically changed news dissemination.

The viral marketing campaign for Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s new book will set new promotional ground by teasing his fan base with a series of innovative puzzles, hidden codes and games scattered across the Internet that are bound to intrigue as much as any of his mystery novels.

Print maps, movie tickets, coupons and other documents in seconds without ever touching your mouse or keyboard.

What kind of footprint have you made in the Twitterverse? Do you know your Twitter ROI, your Twitter influence or stats that determine your Twitter psychographics? In the social media world, this data is becoming easier and easier to access as new analytical tools become available... and now you can track it.

Not to take a back seat, Facebook is driving its social network headlong into the streets of Iran. As witnessed last week when it hastened to make 'real-time search' a major priority, Facebook, not to be overshadowed by Twitter wants to be perceived as a major player on the national scene. Evidence of how it looks to achieve that goal are surfacing in the US and the Middle East.

Did Budweiser's marketing campaign go viral with a pornographic video? In an era when Paris Hilton sex tapes and porn social networks have become the norm, is it any wonder that "this Bud's for you" has taken on a whole new meaning. With over 500,000 views on YouTube, Bud Light and porn have not only partnered up, they've given us a whole heck of a lot to laugh about. And it's more than a little 'tongue & cheek!'

"OMG BFF I have the fastest thumbs in the US!" could have been the rallying cry from Kate Moore, a 15 yr old from Des Moines who received $50,000 in prize money at a Texting Championship. Beating out 250,000 people for a spot in the finals, her digit dexterity crowned her the winner and bragging rights of being the fastest texter in the land.

Like Bill Maher and Twitter, Facebook thinks it needs to move its big tent to a real-time format! Facebook will renovate its News Feed and Search capabilities to real-time format, just as soon as they finish beta testing. Not to be outdone by the Fail Whale, Facebook is launching new real-time search functionality that will allow members the opportunity to search for links, news updates, photos and videos of registered users, and get those results in real time.